A. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to DC-to-DC converters and more particularly to DC-to-DC converters with a three phases controller.
B. Background of the Invention
A DC-to-DC converter is an electronic circuit which converts a source of direct current (DC) from one voltage level to another. DC-to-DC converters are important in portable electronic devices such as cellular phones and laptop computers, which are primarily supplied with power by batteries. It is important that a consistent voltage is supplied as a battery discharges. Switched DC-to-DC converters are one solution such that a decaying voltage level from a battery is compensated with the converter.
DC-DC switching converters may function as boost, buck or buck-boost converters. The buck-boost converter is a type of DC-to-DC converter that has an output voltage magnitude that is either greater than or less than the input voltage magnitude. The buck-boost converter uses either an inverting topology or buck converter combined with a boost converter topology. For an inverting topology, the output voltage is has an opposite polarity than the input. This is a switched-mode power supply with a similar circuit topology to the boost converter and the buck converter. The output voltage is adjustable based on the duty cycle of the switching transistor. A buck converter combined with boost converter topology results in the output voltage typically being the same polarity as the input, but may be lower or higher than the input. Such a non-inverting buck-boost converter may use a single inductor, which is used for both the buck inductor and the boost inductor, or use multiple inductors but only a single switch as in SEPIC (Single-ended primary-inductor converter) and Ćuk topologies.
A typical drawback for inverting buck-boost topology is that the switching action of the power transistor creates a high current ripple in the input capacitors and thus has a limited line transient performance.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system, device and method to provide a flexible and robust buck-boost converter or regulator solution.